


Hello, Dark Lady Moon

by Krimzie



Category: Warcraft III, World of Warcraft
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Prophetic Visions, Windrunner Family, before the scourge, cw: minor horror and gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 09:53:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21354337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krimzie/pseuds/Krimzie
Summary: “I suppose,” Sylvanas said, drawling her words with a languid tongue, “you could say I saw a ghost.”“Whose ghost?”Sylvanas turned back to the ocean waves. “I’m not sure it matters. I only fear, quite ridiculously, that it was prophetic.” She held out her hand and Vereesa quickly took it and squeezed. “Spending time with you and Lirath today was precious to me. And yet, amidst the laughter and teasing, I am sad. I am scared.”
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14





	Hello, Dark Lady Moon

**Author's Note:**

> For the sake of this tiny story, I poked the Windrunner timeline into AU territory so Lireesa is still ranger-general and she and Alleria Windrunner are somewhere offstage but still on Azeroth, Lirath is still alive but adolescent, and Vereesa is a fairly undecorated Farstrider. And Nathanos Marris inexplicably exists, but is only exceptionally briefly mentioned. In theory, the proverbial shit hits the fan relatively quickly after this time period. Hopefully that doesn't bother you too much. Thanks for reading!

“Oh, gods,” Veressa Windrunner giggled, darting behind a golden column. She pulled her little brother with her into a chortling pile on the smooth tiled floor. “Shh-shh! No, no, don’t wake her, Lirath. This is too funny.” They peeked around the column’s edge, Vereesa’s silver-framed cheeks and chin resting atop Lirath’s bright, blonde curls. 

“Is she… alive?” Lirath asked, his voice cracking in an adorably adolescent way. “I think we should--”

“She’s _ fine,_” Vereesa said. “It was the rangers’ Festival of Endurance this morning, which you’d have known if you didn’t sleep right through it, you lazy lynx!” She flicked his ear.

“Ow!” Lirath yelped, rubbing the back of his ever-lengthening pointed ear. At this awkward age, he looked liable to use them as wings and fly away. “I’m a growing man. I can’t help it!”

“Anar’alah,” Vereesa grumbled. “Well, in your hibernation you looked just like our dear sister up there, only with more drool.”

“I don’t drool!” 

“Like the Erendal in rainy season, Lirath.” She smirked as her baby brother glowered. She was only so good at teasing him because she learned from the best, as far as older siblings went. And hers, dear Sylvanas, was a sight to behold as they spied on her behind the columns supporting the upper loft.

The landing on which Sylvanas rested was open to the air on all sides and thus visible to anyone below in the spire’s atrium. She hadn’t even bothered to change out of her training gear, one boot half unbuckled, one foot bare and dangling over the back of a red and gold chaise. Her quiver lie spilled of its arrows next to her hunting pack, her bow still hanging in the crook of her elbow. She had quite literally fallen face-first onto the cushions, face buried between two crimson decorative pillows, white-gold hair splayed and tangled around her shoulders. 

And, Vereesa noticed with a cringe, still caked in mud and leaves. Mother’s housekeeper would _ not _ be pleased.

Lirath was tiptoeing up the ramp to the loft when Vereesa rolled her eyes and caught up to him. “Should we scare her?”

“If you want to die, sure,” Vereesa said. “And nothing scares her, besides.”

They peered into the loft and Lirath smothered a chuckle. “Is she snoring? She’s snoring!” Sneaking ever nearer, he was finally close enough that he could shout right into her ear, and as timing would have it, Sylvanas grumbled in her sleep and rolled so her face was lined right up with his. Two identical noses brushed and Lirath leapt backwards with a “woah!” which, Light blessed, erupted from the newly-discovered lower register of his burgeoning voice.

The unfamiliar pitch must’ve startled Sylvanas out of her sleep and the youngest Windrunners dove behind the chaise. As they looked at each other conspiratorially, trying so hard to stifle giggles, they heard their sister groaning behind them. 

“Vereesa? And was that…” And suddenly her face loomed directly above their heads. “Lirath!? I might’ve confused you for Lor’themar Theron with that lion’s growl!”

Lirath and Vereesa could no longer hold it in; they cracked into bouts of giggles which only grew into laughter. “You--were--snoring!” Lirath cackled between gasps of air. “Shall I tell Nathanos his perfect lady sleeps like a thistle boar?”

“You wouldn’t dare!” Sylvanas gasped, shoving him playfully. He shoved back and earned his second ear flick of the day, while she had the unbuckled clasp of her boot yoinked from Lirath’s choice angle on the lower ground. With a not-so-graceful thud, she landed atop her siblings--a trip, Vereesa mused, that was absolutely more purposeful than accidental. Luckily, Lirath was already a hair taller and thicker than Sylvanas and caught most of her weight. 

“Aw, Sylvanas! Get off! You stink,” Lirath whined, made all the more comical by the way his voice slipped back into its childish pitch and cracked again.

“Oh, yes! Hawkstrider manure,” Sylvanas said matter-of-factly as she rolled onto her back to look at Vereesa upside down with an instigating smirk. “Makes for excellent traction when scaling smooth cliff faces. I got a commendation for that, you know.”

“You’re so odd,” Vereesa said. “You’re lucky you’re so pretty.”

“You know what they say in Lordaeron,” Sylvanas said, groaning slightly as she stood and began to properly disarm, “_ Offer not your hand to a beautiful elf, for she'll eat your spawn_… or come home smelling of strider dung.”

“You made that up,” Vereesa accused.

“Probably,” Sylvanas conceded easily. “But it would be a good proverb, no?”

Lirath snorted. “Go bathe.”

“I’ve a better idea. Let’s go to the lakes,” Sylvanas said, glancing outside. “The skies are clear and we haven't been for a while.”

Vereesa smiled. Since Sylvanas had been training to join mother's next deployment, she hadn't much time to spend with her siblings. “Last one there's a troll tusk!”

“Guess that's me,” Sylvanas quipped, stretching out her ankle with a wince. “I'll catch up.”

* * *

“And then there was the time you stole my lyre the morning of the recital…” Lirath was recounting, three fingers becoming four fingers poking out of the water's surface. His drenched curls hung straight and dark with the weight of the water.

“I didn't _ steal _ it!” Sylvanas insisted. “I had new strings made and I was restringing it for you as a surprise and, for the last time, it was not the morning of, it was at least two days before--”

“...but I _ liked _ the worn in strings!”

“They weren't holding a tuning, Lir!” Sylvanas splashed him in the face. “Don’t forget who taught you to play, you arrogant gnat!” Vereesa rolled her eyes. Her older sister and younger brother argued more than anyone in the family because, by many measures, they were exactly the same person. No one could instigate Sylvanas like Lirath could, and no one could rankle Lirath like Sylvanas.

At the end of the day they absolutely _ adored _ each other, but by the Sunwell, they were _ exhausting _ to listen to.

It was nice that Lirath getting older took the burden of elder sibling torture off of Vereesa, but the two were incessant. And loud. They had a tendency toward absurd topical fixation and argumentative stamina that could last _ days _. They were both so smart and played conversations like a delicate sword battle, anticipating the other’s moves ten steps ahead of the game. When words failed, playful roughhousing was not out of the question.

Luckily, Sylvanas seemed too tired to bring her usual intensity to the spat. She treaded water lazily, occasionally submerging under the surface to coax dirt and leaves out of her hair, but didn't engage in the younger siblings’ pickup game of hogskin toss. Still, it was nice to just spend time with her. As the intensity of her training had increased and as she'd been assigned more and more patrols, Vereesa watched her sister grow more serious. She seemed so much older and much more like Minn’da. 

She needed this break.

Sylvanas wore a water tunic like Vereesa’s own that dipped low in the back and Vereesa could see a long puckered scar down her sister’s chiseled shoulder blades. It was from a forest troll's ax. The night after that bloody patrol, Vereesa had found Sylvanas on the coast by their spire home, smoking dried herbs in a thin, straight pipe she recognized as their late father’s. Mesmerized by the easy way she pinched the fragrant flakes and packed the pipe and by the swirls of light smoke hanging around her like ghostly halos in the moonlight, Vereesa was uncharacteristically quiet. Sylvanas didn’t seem to mind. Bandages wrapped her chest, holding medicinal linens in place on her back wound, one arm immobilized with cloth to prevent her from tearing it open again; it had to hurt to breathe, let alone speak.

When at last Sylvanas broke the silence, she confessed something Vereesa would not soon forget. 

“I will always despise this scar,” she'd said slowly, her words deceptively mellow.

“Why?”

She'd taken a long drag from the pipe. She blew out the smoke in one, two, three, four percussive puffs. The last two were near perfect circles. “Because I was running away.”

She turned her body to Vereesa, then, against the pull of her fresh wound. “A mistake I will never again make. I would sooner die a fool than a coward. I’ll take a sword to the heart before another ax in the back.”

And they’d watched the bright stars in the dark, dark sky over the dark, dark ocean, no other words shared between them.

Months had since passed and Sylvanas’ wound had healed. Today, in the daylight, the water glistened under the sun and she was smiling. She was happy and Vereesa was happy to see it.

“No response, then, Sylvie?” Lirath was saying, tossing the hogskin to his elder sister. She caught it easily; after all, she’d been the one who learned the sport from the humans in Lordaeron and taught it to her brother and sister. 

“I am utterly loathe to admit it,” Sylvanas said dryly, “but I don’t disagree.” She tossed the ball in an easy spiral to Vereesa, who caught it just before it splashed in the water. 

“I’m sorry, am I dreaming?” Vereesa gasped dramatically, clutching the ball to her chest. “Did you just _ agree _ with _ Lirath _?”

“Ah-ah, correction,” Sylvanas said, floating onto her back. “I _ don’t disagree._ That detail, while minor, technically absolves me of such an admission.” She closed her eyes with a soft smile on her face, basking in the warm sunbeams.

Lirath smirked wickedly, quick to target his prey. Vereesa shot him a scolding look but he just rolled his eyes at her. Light, there would be no stopping this boy today. He slipped under the water quietly, like a razorjaw approaching an unsuspecting frog. _ Well, it’s his funeral, _Vereesa thought to herself, tossing the ball lightly into the air and catching it a few times.

Three… two… one…

“RAAAAGH!” Lirath growled, emerging from the water and snatching Sylvanas by the shoulders. He sunk her deep into the water and by the time she buoyed up, sputtering, she was already on the hunt. 

“Oh ho ho, you wretched little mongoose! Get over here!” Sylvanas shouted, leaping halfway out of the lake to tackle him squarely into the depths. Waves billowed around them, disturbing the water’s surface as far as the eye could see. Birds by the shoreline flew away, squawking, and sleepy turtles dove back into the waters to hide from the Windrunner maelstrom.

Lirath emerged gasping, but Sylvanas was nowhere to be seen. Seconds passed until, tentatively, Lirath said, “Sylvanas…?” He glanced at Vereesa and Vereesa frowned at him worriedly. “Did you see where she went?” 

“No,” Vereesa said, swallowing hard. The joviality of the moment at once turned sour. “See, Lirath! This is why you should listen to mother about--”

Suddenly, and with unison yelps, her and Lirath were swept below surface by their ankles. Vereesa opened her eyes underwater, braving the sting to spot their stealthy attacker. Sylvanas’ hair floated around her, a pale, shimmering crown, and with a quick tuck she spun and glided through the water with powerful kicks as Lirath gave chase. They all breached the surface at just about the same time, only to see that Sylvanas was already at the shoreline, ready to scale up the cliff at the waterfall. With her terrain training, there was no way Vereesa and Lirath could possibly hope to climb the wet rocks like she could. They slowed to a stop at its base, deflated.

Sylvanas looked down at them, one foot high and balanced in a crack, the opposite hand gripped easily to a protruding rock formation. “Not even going to try, then?” she called down over the rushing sounds of the waterfall, smirking still. 

“You do this every day. We’ll never catch you!” Lirath whined.

“Perhaps the stars will align for you yet. I am quite tired, after all.”

Vereesa glanced over at Lirath, narrowed her eyes, then bounded toward the cliff to climb after her sister. Lirath followed, recharged.

“Sinu a'manore!” Sylvanas said happily, laughing as she continued up the rocks. “I worried you’d never play along.”

“And let you take advantage of our poor baby brother?” Vereesa called up. “Two on one should give you a little more of a challenge!” Sylvanas was right--they _ did _ have a chance at victory today. Her older sister’s movements were significantly slower than usual, soreness and muscle fatigue hampering her usual agility. Before long, Vereesa was close at her sister’s foot.

“Come on, Lady Moon! Growing old and silver down here,” she teased. Sylvanas had hooked into a resting position. 

“Light, just give me a moment, your hair can’t silver any more than it already has,” Sylvanas said, shaking out an arm, grabbing the wall, then doing the same with the other arm. The moment’s pause gave Lirath all the time he needed to scamper up to their left. There was hardly enough room for him between his sisters and the sheer edge of the rock face, a precarious surface of wet moss and mushrooms.

“Ha! Take that!” he said as gracelessly nudged his way upward. “Sun takes Moons! Ha-ha!” 

“Fanah, fanah, _ fanah__!_” Sylvanas cried out, her foot slipping where his replaced hers. “Careful, Lir!” But he didn’t hear or didn’t care, focused as he was on his upcoming victory. As he passed her head, he leaned over to swat her ear with boyish aggression. Startled, Sylvanas turned too quickly and, with no purchase for her left foot, she dangled by three quickly-slipping fingers.

The last thing Vereesa heard before Sylvanas fell from the cliff was a curse in Common, Sylvanas’ favorite one.

* * *

Sylvanas didn’t want to open her eyes. She knew she shouldn’t have pushed herself so hard after the festival trials, but instigating Lirath had made her feel like a child again, a carefree child without responsibilities like training and fighting and killing. She didn’t want to squander it in case it never happened again. 

She could never be too sure when it would never happen again.

She’d be fine, of course, with nothing injured but her pride and a finger or two. It had made Lirath so happy to win. She hoped he wouldn’t feel guilty. 

Sighing, she winced up toward the sun.

But there was no sun. Instead of the clear blue sky above the crystal lake she saw a dark stone ceiling, dripping cold, dirty water onto dusty cobblestone. Bats circled in a far corner, their squeaks and the steady plink-plink-plink of the leaking stonework all she could hear. She sat up immediately, nauseated by the overpowering smell of sewage and rot.

A singing voice, small and delicate, soon joined the dripping water and chirping bats. Her ears angled toward the haunting sound as she searched the oppressive darkness to spot a sick child sitting on a footbridge spanning preternaturally green waters.

The river of bile sizzled under the child’s bare and dangling feet. Her toes were purple, blue-black at the tips, and gnarled with gangrene and frostbite. Still, they swayed contentedly back and forth like the feet of a happy, healthy child over a freshwater creek on a warm midsummer’s evening. A solemn lament left her cracked lips. It was a Highborne hymn, a song Sylvanas recognized as the traditional call to times before the idyllic peace of her childhood… except this sounded more like a funeral dirge. _ Sin’dorei, _ the child kept singing. _ No. That’s not right. _The elf child tossed rib bones and finger bones one by one into the ghoulish river, her eyes as red as blood. As those burning eyes locked onto Sylvanas, they dripped blood rivulets like so many tears down her sunken cheeks. Slowly, the head began to tilt and tilt until it split from her neck to dangle on tendons alone, her vertebrae severed clean.

“Hello, Dark Lady,” she said from blue lips on a swinging skull.  
  


* * *

_ Sylvanas! Wake up! _

_ Wake up! _

“Wake up!” Vereesa said, splashing water on her sister’s contorted face. At last she stirred, the smallest of exhales shifting the damp strand of blonde hair sticking to her lips. “Gods, Lirath! You could’ve killed her. Are you proud of yourself?”

“I didn’t mean to! I didn’t mean to, I swear it!” Lirath cried, all traces of that new, deeper voice gone as he whimpered pathetically. “Come on, Sylvanas, wake up. I’m sorry!”

Sylvanas’ eyebrows pinched together as she winced her eyes against the bright sky and waved Vereesa away. “It’s alright, Little Sun,” she said lightly. “I’m alright.” She sat up achily, catching Lirath as he launched headfirst into her embrace. She stroked his still-damp hair as he sobbed into the crook of her neck. 

“I’m-I’m-I’m sorry!” he hiccuped, his Thalassian tumbling wetly in his throat. “I just wanted to win. I just wanted to be funny. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I’m not hurt,” Sylvanas said, but Vereesa caught the way she pressed gingerly at the back of her skull. “It was just a game.”

“O-okay,” Lirath eked out, wiping his wet nose on the back of his hand. “You’re alright?”

“I’m alright.”

“You promise?”

Something flickered in Sylvanas’s eyes, gone as quickly as it came, but it did not escape Vereesa. “Promise. I hate to be so dull but it seems my exertions have at long last caught up to me. I’ll see you at dinner.”

She’d slipped away into the forest before either sibling could respond.

* * *

Their meal was a quiet affair, shared between the only Windrunners presently lodging at the Spire. Lirath was sullen, still guilty over the accident at the waterfall, and Sylvanas was fatigued and distracted. She’d left without a word as soon as they’d cleared and cleaned the table and dining ware. Vereesa had expected Sylvanas to turn in early, but after a few moments she heard the unmistakable sounds of a hawkstrider prancing along the pavers toward the beach. Vereesa was quick to follow, leaving Lirath to sulk. She knew exactly where Sylvanas was headed.

While she’d done her best to pad stealthily along the trail several field lengths behind and use the soft sand as not to alert her sister, she was promptly greeted on approach.

“Little Moon,” Sylvanas said. She did not turn to face her. 

Vereesa stood up from her crouch and sighed heavily as she rounded the breakwater rocks and perched next to her sister. “How did you know?”

“I’d be quite a useless ranger if I’d not heard your bullish approach.” All the playfulness from earlier was gone. Sylvanas wouldn’t even look at her. “But it would seem you remembered my hiding spot. Did it not occur to you that perhaps I wanted to be left alone?” She scoffed. “No, of course it didn’t.”

Her words stung. “That’s not fair,” Vereesa said, swallowing the lump in her throat. “I’m worried. We both are.”

“I am fine,” Sylvanas said, furrowing her brows. “It has been a tiring day.” She gazed off oddly, then shook her head. “I’m tired.”

“But you aren’t abed.”

Sylvanas cocked an eyebrow and smirked. It was neither mean nor in good humor. It was merely resigned. “I don’t wish to sleep.” She looked to Vereesa at last, pressing her chin into her shoulder as if her head was too heavy to hold upright. The bright silver halos of her eyes were pronounced against the dark night as she squinted, feral as the tapetum lucidum of a forest lynx. “I suppose you will ask why.”

“Why?”

Sylvanas chuckled emptily, nodding. “I guess I did lead you here, against my better judgment, knowing you’d follow. Knowing you’d pry. Had I truly wished for solitude I might have picked a different spot altogether.” 

“Why?” Vereesa asked again.

“I suppose,” Sylvanas said, drawling her words with a languid tongue, “you could say I saw a ghost.”

“Whose ghost?”

Sylvanas turned back to the ocean waves. “I’m not sure it matters. I only fear, quite ridiculously, that it was prophetic.” She held out her hand and Vereesa quickly took it and squeezed. “Spending time with you and Lirath today was precious to me. And yet, amidst the laughter and teasing, I am sad. I am scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“Losing you.” Sylvanas’ hand tightened over Vereesa’s. “I was visited by an elf child. She sang a song. But it was absurd, as even the worst of our enemies have never breached our borders.” Sylvanas chuckled again, sadly. “Shindu fallah nah.”

Vereesa recoiled at the phrase. It was a superstition especially strong in the Windrunner family that the military call never be uttered within the walls of Quel’Thalas, lest it forever curse the stalwart security of the elf gates. “Sylvanas…”

“Surely you don’t believe..”

“I don’t wish to risk it!”

She then sang the phrase to the melody of a Highborn hymn and Vereesa threw her sister’s hand back as if it had burned her. “Sylvanas, _ stop_!”

Sylvanas did stop, but gazed cooly at Vereesa like she had access to some greater truth and Vereesa could only fumble in ignorance, grasping fruitlessly to understand it. And perhaps she did know something. But if Sylvanas was truly so worried about the safety of her family, then she wouldn’t so callously fling around _ that phrase, _would she?

“I believe you just need a good night’s rest because you rattled your head with that fall,” Vereesa said with stubborn finality. “I will mull you some Eversong wine with a sprig of bloodthistle and you’ll have a nice, dreamless sleep and tomorrow it’ll be like nothing happened.” 

“Perhaps you are correct,” Sylvanas said. 

“Come home, then?”

“I will,” she agreed. “But sit with me a moment longer, Little Moon?”

And she did. Of course she did. Fingers laced, they listened to the Great Sea tumble on the sands. It may have been only minutes or an hour or more, but she stayed with Sylvanas on the jetty that dark evening until a calm resolve carried them wordlessly home to the Spire. Perhaps, one day, after more ranger training and battles and bloodshed and heavy burdens of war Vereesa might understand the fear Sylvanas carried in her heart but it was not this day. As far as Vereesa was concerned, the gates could fall, the Light could call them home too early, but not even death itself could pull the Windrunners apart. 

_ Shindu fallah nah? _

She’d like to see them try.


End file.
